


Sometimes as Many as Seven

by Fialleril



Series: Double Agent Vader [19]
Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Double Agent Vader, F/M, Gen, Pre-Het
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 19:57:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9140005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fialleril/pseuds/Fialleril
Summary: Leia and Han talk about the Force, philosophy, and that bounty hunter they ran into on Ord Mantell.A short coda toRocks and Water, written as a tribute to Carrie Fisher.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Echo Chamber](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7372870) by [duc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/duc/pseuds/duc). 



> The title refers to something Carrie once said about having feelings for Harrison Ford: “at least five, sometimes as many as seven.”
> 
> For that anon on tumblr who said I should write a fic about Leia strangling someone with their own bra, in honor of Carrie. This isn’t quite that, but it’s close.
> 
> No major warnings, but you do get a secondhand account of Anakin’s view of the Dark Side. And Leia and Han talk pretty frankly about killing.

Leia had been expecting Han for three days already when he finally appeared. She came off duty to find him lounging against the door to her quarters, trying and failing to look casual. He was alone, which was unusual – she almost never saw him without Chewie.

He straightened up slightly when he saw her coming. The smirk he shot her was probably meant to be cocky, but it looked more sheepish than anything.

“Can I help you with something, Captain Solo?” she asked primly, crossing her arms over her chest.

To her surprise, he didn’t take the bait. Instead, he pushed fully away from the door, took half a step towards her, and then stopped abruptly, twisting his hands. “I just came to talk, Leia,” he said.

That’s three times, a small part of Leia thought. She turned hastily toward the keypad on her door.

“All right,” she said, keeping her back to him as the door slid open. “Come in, then.”

She could feel him hesitating. But it had to be his choice. Leia shrugged and swept inside. After a long moment Han followed.

“So,” he said, standing awkwardly just inside her quarters. “The Force, huh?”

Leia kept her expression carefully neutral. “That’s right,” she said.

Han grimaced, then tried to turn it into a smile. He mostly succeeded. “Well,” he said. “Guess I can’t really argue with – with what you can do. Not after seeing that. But I still say there’s not some all-powerful energy field controlling my destiny.”

The discomfort eased in her shoulders and Leia laughed. “I don’t believe that either, you know,” she said easily, biting her lip to keep from laughing again at his obvious surprise.

“But – ”

“The Force connects everything,” said Leia, waving a hand vaguely. “It’s like – like the background energy of the universe, I suppose. I can’t really explain it. But we make our own destiny.”

She hadn’t realized how much tension stiffened Han’s spine and pinched his face until it disappeared. “Well yeah,” he said with a much more believable cocky grin. “That’s what I’ve always said.”

“This is a shocking development, Captain Solo,” Leia teased. “It appears we actually agree on something.”

His smile turned oddly soft. It was a good look for him, Leia thought. He should really smile that way more often. “Guess we do, Princess,” he said.

And then one side of his mouth ticked further up, becoming a smirk. Leia bit back a sigh. He never could let the moment last.

Well, she could do something about the smirk, anyway. “But I know you didn’t come here to talk philosophy, Captain,” she said briskly. “What can I do for you?”

Han’s smirk disappeared so fast it might never have existed at all.

“This is about the bounty hunter on Ord Mantell, isn’t it?” Leia muttered. She should have known.

Han held her gaze. “What the hell happened there? You never actually said.”

Leia was fully aware of what she hadn’t said. She’d been trying not to think it, too.

The Duros bounty hunter was hardly the first person she’d killed. She was an expert shot with a blaster and she’d lost track of how many times she’d proven that in the field. This shouldn’t have been any different.

But she couldn’t deny that it was. There was something horribly intimate about feeling another person’s breath in your own lungs, feeling the shape of their throat in your mind and your hand, and then closing your fist.

She didn’t regret it. If she hadn’t done it, she would have shot the bounty hunter instead, and the noise would have drawn far too much attention. She knew she’d made the right decision.

But it still felt…strange. Not in the way Ekkreth had warned her about, though. She didn’t feel she’d lost herself, or that her thoughts were echoing on themselves, cracking apart and bleeding away from her. That was how he’d described it. If you weren’t careful, if you didn’t know exactly who you were and have your feet planted firmly on the solid bedrock, you could lose yourself in the storm. You could be devoured by the echoes and the swirling winds, until nothing was left of you but the raging storm, and the storm would destroy everyone and everything around you.

Leia didn’t think she could ever forget that lesson. It was spoken with the dry, bone-weary voice of horrible experience.

She’d asked him, only once, if it was possible to escape that storm. Ekkreth had been silent for a long time. Leia could still see the sudden spurts of Coruscant’s industrial fires reflecting and disappearing from the panes of his helmet. She’d felt his invisible eyes boring into her behind the blazing lenses of the mask. Finally he’d answered, “It is not possible alone. But if there is someone to remind you, to speak your name and give you to yourself…” He’d paused then, studying her again for a steady, unnerving moment.

Restless in the silence, Leia had said the first thing that came to mind. “I am not the storm, and I am not the bedrock either.”

“Exactly,” Ekkreth had said, voice rich with satisfaction. “You are the desert.”

She thought those words now. She held to them, let them settle in her bones, and thought, _I am Leia. I am the strength of mountains and the fluidity of rivers. I know myself. I am not afraid._

“Leia?” Han asked. “Hey. You all right? If you don’t want to tell me – ”

The sound of her name (four times now) startled her out of her thoughts. “I’m fine,” she told Han, and realized it was true. She smiled. “And it’s all right. I’ll tell you. I was just…organizing my thoughts.”

“Sure,” said Han, though he sounded anything but.

Leia steeled herself. “The Force connects everything,” she began. “You. Me. Everyone else on this base. All the life on this world, and the world itself. Metal and rock and snow and plants and people and – everything.” She took a deep breath, entirely aware of the irony. “And every part of everything, too. If I concentrate, I can feel the air in someone else’s lungs. I can feel the rush of blood through their veins, the pumping of their heart, the movement of the diaphragm. And – and I can stop it.”

There was a heavy silence. Leia chewed her lip and waited.

“Oh,” said Han. She couldn’t begin to guess what he meant by that.

There was nothing to do but go on. Leia sighed. “I had a choice,” she said softly. “That bounty hunter had seen us, he recognized us, and I couldn’t let him raise the alarm. I had to – ”

“Well yeah,” Han cut in. “Of course. I was about to shoot him myself, but you were quicker on the draw.” The look he shot her was openly impressed. “That’s not something I can say about many people, you know.”

Leia laughed in sheer relief. “I find that difficult to believe, Captain Solo.”

He tried to look offended, but the expression wouldn’t stick to his face. “Listen, Your Worship. I didn’t come here to get all high and mighty about you killing some bounty hunter. If you ask me, this Rebellion could do with a few more people who are willing to take a shot when it’s necessary. I told you: if you hadn’t done it, I would have done it myself. It’s just – ”

“You saw me kill someone without a weapon, without even touching them, and you don’t know what to do with that,” Leia finished for him.

Han blinked. “Well…yeah,” he said.

“If it helps,” said Leia, “I don’t either.”

He stared at her. “All right,” he said. “I’ll bite. What do you mean?”

For the first time, Leia felt uncertain. She’d been involved with the Rebellion for most of her life, and she’d been essentially an active soldier for the last two years. But this…this wasn’t the kind of thing people really talked about. She’d never even talked about it with Luke, and she was more open with him than probably anyone else in her life. Besides, Han had been a smuggler for hire before joining the Alliance. She couldn’t imagine he had any qualms about any of this.

But maybe that was what made him so easy to talk to.

She held his eyes and asked, “Do you remember the first time you killed someone?”

Han didn’t flinch. She liked that about him. It was a refreshing kind of honesty, particularly startling in a man who made so much of his living by lying. “Yeah,” he said. “Of course I remember.”

“It felt like that,” Leia admitted. “Like…I know it was necessary, and I know I did the most logical thing in the circumstances, and I know I saved our lives. But…”

“Yeah,” said Han, with the most honest smile she’d ever seen on him. “But.”

The rush of relief was startling in its intensity. He understood. There was someone else who knew what it meant, to regret and not to regret all at once. She wasn’t alone.

“So,” said Han, because he still didn’t know how to let a moment last, “that was a first, huh? You don’t make a habit of strangling people with space magic? That’s good to know.”

Leia rolled her eyes. It was a habit she thought she’d outgrown years ago, but Han Solo brought that out in her. “Space magic? Really?”

Han gave an exaggerated shrug. “I call it like I see it, Your Worship.”

“I really wish you would stop calling me that,” Leia muttered. But there wasn’t much heat in her words. And it was obvious from Han’s smirk that he knew it.

“Of course, Your Highnessness,” he said.

“You’re impossible,” Leia sighed. She stripped off her oil-stained vest, pretended not to notice the way Han startled or his flustered cough, and slipped on a clean vest before she could start shivering too badly. Hoth was an ideal location for a base: easily hidden, far out of the way of the usual Imperial shipping or patrol routes, and without any native inhabitants who might notice them. In every way that really mattered, it was perfect, and she might never forgive Luke for finding the place.

She glanced at Han, who was dressed in pretty much the same way he always was, regardless of the climate. She had no doubt he was freezing. But of course he would never admit it.

“I’m starving,” she said. “If you want to continue talking philosophy, Captain Solo, you’ll have to follow me to the mess.”

Han gestured grandly at the door. “Lead the way then, Your Mightiness.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] Sometimes as Many as Seven](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13227873) by [isweedan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/isweedan/pseuds/isweedan)




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